Color my glasses

There was a story in the New York Times last week. And I tried to write about it. I did. Day after day.
But as you see, I was unable to. It just didn't help in the optimism end game.
The story, by Michael Luo, was about unemployment's impact on families, particularly children. It quoted studies that suggest children in families where the primary bread winner has become unemployed suffer emotionally--to the extent that they may be more likely to drop out of school, were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade and may have lower earnings as an adult.
First reaction: I'm grateful, for my daughter's sake, neither of us has become unemployed. But on second thought: Has anyone studied what mega pay and hours cuts do to kids? When you add the unemployed to the underemployed, you're talking about a lot of people right now. If these things hold true, then Wall Street's greed and mismanagement are even more detestable than previously imagined.
Not only have large corporations taken their workers, wrung them out and cast them off, not only have they stolen huge amounts of taxpayer dollars, but now they are stealing from our children's futures as well. And on another front, an insidious group called "the Family" has worked its tentacles into US and world politics, using religion to defend the status quo. (More about this another time. But seriously, everyone should read The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet.)
Deep breath here. See what I mean? This line of angry thinking is not very useful to me at the moment. It is not helping me be an optimist.
So instead, I'll meditate today on another story I found, this time in Slate and Newsweek. In it, Daniel Gross argues that job recovery may be sooner rather than later. He cites big gains in productivity over the past few months--meaning fewer workers are doing more work. (Economists call this productivity. Another name would be under-paying your employees.) These gains will force companies to hire sooner, because there's only so much you can squeeze out of an employee before he or she collapses. "Hamsters can only run so fast on their treadmills," is the way he puts it.
This could be very good news for all of us.
Assuming the hiring takes place in the United States.
Sigh. There I go agin.

Good Luck With That

The idea was I would spend the weekend not thinking about our impending financial ruin. I would just take time off from the worry and enjoy myself.
And how did that go?
Saturday morning: "Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of U.S. Economy" was the first thing that met my eyes on the New York Times front page. I was down to the part where an economist says the lost job "aren't coming back" before remembering. This is my worry free weekend. By that time I'd also seen the Kansas City Star headline about people foregoing medical care as they lose their jobs, and another one about a bad season ahead for home sales.
Well, at least the stock market isn't open. Hey, it's about time I checked in how it's doing today.
Ok. The DOW is down, but only by 52 points.
To continue: Little bits of info have started to seep out that there will be an announcement about McClatchy and how new cutbacks will be handled at Mike's work. So right now we're like the Ghostbusters in the final battle at the top of the skyscraper. What form will our personal Destroyer take? Will it be a layoff or a pay cut? At least for the time being, it appears a furlough is off the table.
Given those options, I'd gladly take the Stay-Puft marshmallow man.
I suppose a real optimist would not refer to this as a "destroyer." A real optimist would call it an "opportunity," or a "temporary setback." But what the hell, I'm not a real optimist today.
My mom said on the phone this weekend, "We'll just have to pray nothing bad happens." I know she meant well, and I normally accept people's offers of prayer with good grace. So I can't explain why hearing that put me into such a sour mood. Yeah, we'll run to our prayer closets while those Wall Street cheaters decide whether my daughter goes to college.

But then I thought about it. There's a well-established tradition of magical thinking even amongst Christians. It wasn't so long ago I read about various house-flippers burying little statues of St. Joseph upside down on their properties to ensure a good sale.

Surely there is a similar good luck charm for employment, and I set out to look for it.

It turned out to be harder than I thought. There are tons of superstitions about prosperity. Most of them involve eating specific foods or wearing specific clothes on New Year's Day. Black-eyed peas, lentils or pork are all good luck. Chicken and turkey are bad because you'll scratch all year for money like they scratch for food. I even found one web site that says Colombian women wear gold panties at midnight for prosperity.
I realized with a sinking heart that we probably hadn't eaten any of the correct New Year's foods. And I do not own a pair of yellow underpants. So it's too late to save ourselves that way.

Back online, I looked up various combinations of "luck," "employment," "unemployment," and "jobs." I found a website advertising products you consume to have good "luck" with your employee urine drug test.

Then I found something called the Internet Book of Shadows. On it was a long list of herbs and the various things and spells they were supposed to cast. Again, there was tons on "prosperity," but I went right past. Looking for "prosperity" at this point is setting the bar too high.
I found that mountain mahogany and holly are good for "anti-lightning," an herb called honesty repels monsters and skunk cabbage is good for legal matters. Hound's tongue is good for--well tying dog's tongues. And if you can find some thistle milk, it's useful for snake enraging. (Seriously. Snake enraging.)
Three things were listed as voodoo or hoodoo charms for employment: devil's shoestring,lucky hand and pecan.













Devil's shoestring and lucky hand, coincidentally, also are good for gambling. I've never seen them grow around here, so I would have to order them at an occult store. And I don't want to get on that mailing list. Pecan, though. I have some pecans in the freezer right now. We're having them on our salad tonight.

Still, that doesn't seem like enough. St. Joseph is a patron saint of house hunters, among other things. Maybe we could turn away from the occult and look to Christianity for our employment superstition.
It turns out there is a patron saint for journalists and authors. He is St. Francis de Sales.

Sales. I like the sound of that. St. Francis was not a journalist but he was an author and an amiable man, by some accounts. He wrote some things that were, apparently, readable.
Of course, "sales" doesn't mean the same thing in French as English. In French, sales could be a form of the verb "saler" which means "to salt." If a story is "sale" (with an accent on the e) it is salty, spicy or juicy. Sale can also be an adjective that means "dirty." So dirt, salty or juicy--it all works.

Maybe there's a statue of him somewhere I could bury. Or maybe I'll just print out a picture and set up a little table with some dried lentils, bacon and pecans. Hey, maybe that lemony looking Buddha's hand would be a stand-in for Lucky Hand. I think I've seen it at Whole Foods.

Here's hoping it works.

Gimme A D!

I was somewhat down in the dumps this morning, facing a new week, thinking about further layoffs and the unemployment numbers that came out Friday. Then I opened up the newspaper and what did I find on the front page?
"Obama's Advisers Warn of Deflation," the main story of the day in the Kansas City Star.

Suddenly, being an optimist seems a whole lot easier.
Deflation! Yay! Now I have something to cheer about! We've watched for years as college tuition, health care and last year, groceries, went up and up. We've felt left behind as a whole lot of electronic gadgets became "must haves" along with a monthly connection fee. We've seen home heating charges go up by double digits again and again. With deflation, maybe now we'll at last have a chance to catch up. Hell, yeah!

I wasn't too far into my daydream of money left over at the end of the pay period when I realized that one of the headline words seemed off. "Obama's Advisers Warn of Deflation." Shouldn't it have said "promise?"

It turns out, though, that we're supposed to fear deflation. The adviser quoted said that a downward price spiral would be difficult to get out of. Theoretically, people would just hold off buying things forever because they expect the price to keep going down and down.
You see, dear reader, deflation might make things momentarily good for buyers, but very bad for sellers.

To which I say: Yes. That is what is known as a "buyers' market."
This is what I always thought was supposed to be so great about free market capitalism. When goods become scarce, the price goes up. Apparently, though, the free market isn't quite as majestic when prices are going down.

As for the idea that people will put off buying. Well, let me tell you about our stove.
It's a gas stove that came with the house. The electric ignition no longer works on the burners. The temperature below 350 degrees is no longer trustworthy. And opening the broiler drawer causes a hideous shriek so nauseating that I avoid broiling at all costs. We've waited through our kids' college to get a new stove. If the prices on those things came down even a tiny bit, I would do a little dance in the street then run right to the store, money in fist. Ditto the refrigerator, washer/dryer and hot water heater.

I'm betting there are a lot of people who, like us, have slipped backwards the past few years. In fact, if you believe various reports, there are all kinds of people who have been putting these purchases off for years and will not wait indefinitely.

About the only way deflation could be bad would be if it caused our income to go down. Oh wait. No raise this year. Higher health care. No 401K match. That's already happened.

So don't think of it as deflation. Think of it as "adjustment."